


Practicing Sportsmanship

by factorielle



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Conversations, Gen, Hospitals, Waiting, Winter Cup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/factorielle/pseuds/factorielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the night of the semifinals, and Kasamatsu waits.</p><blockquote>
  <p>He ignored the issue of Zunon Boy as studiously as when it had been casually lying around in Kaijou’s locker room back in September, and grabbed the ancient Kinema Junpo that advertised a list of the Top Ten Foreign Actresses of the 20th century.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Practicing Sportsmanship

There were a dozen magazines scattered on a sturdy coffee table. Yukio had dropped the sports bags in the corner between the table and the wall, then stopped paying attention to it in favor of pacing up and down the small waiting room.

Somewhere around lap forty-five, the woman who'd been fiddling with her phone since he arrived clicked her tongue and shot him an impatient look. He nodded in apology and sat down in the nearest chair.

He stayed there ten seconds, looked at the clock ticking away on the wall.

It had been thirteen minutes.

He got up, and crossed the room to shuffle through the magazines. Most of them were health-related, dispensing advice he didn't need about the benefits of regular exercise, and information he didn't want about the possible complications of traumatic injuries left unchecked too long. He ignored the issue of Zunon Boy as studiously as when it had been casually lying around in Kaijou's locker room back in September, and grabbed the ancient Kinema Junpo that advertised a list of the Top Ten Foreign Actresses of the 20th century.

He slumped in the nearest chair magazine in hand, leg pressed against the familiar weight of his bag.

He glanced at the clock again.

Fifteen minutes.

Yukio knew almost none of the names on the list, had only the vaguest sense of recognition for the others, but he made himself read through each blurb carefully, detaching each word in his head until he felt his phone buzz against his leg.

It wasn't Kobori, though, nor anyone in his contacts list, and he had no desire to deal with telemarketers.

He looked up.

Eighteen minutes.

He looked back at the magazine, scanning for the point where he'd stopped. Nothing he read seemed even remotely familiar.

His phone was still buzzing.

Yukio got up again, accepted the call just before he pushed the door open.

"Kasamatsu speaking." His attention had been distracted earlier, but it was cold out, with no cloud cover to temper the December chill. At least the parking lot was bigger than the waiting room, and deserted. Nobody here would glare at him for walking.

"Hi, it's Hyuuga." A beat. There was noise behind him, the familiar commotion of a team high on victory. Yukio's grip on his phone tightened. "From Seirin."

"I know." Yukio could have done without hearing either of those names again today, or any time soon. "What can I do for you?"

"Nothing," Hyuuga said, "I just… how's Kise?"

They'd wheeled him in for an X-Ray with a needless explanation to Coach about how it was strict procedure. Patients couldn't be accompanied by more than one person; that was procedure, too.

There was no clock to look at out here. "He'll be fine by the next time you play Kaijou," Yukio assured, staring at the ambulance that was coming in slowly, without a siren or flashing lights.

He left out _but not tomorrow._  
  
Hyuuga, to his credit, left out _I'm sorry._

"Good. Listen, I'm getting this third-hand, but it seems that Haizaki was waiting outside the gym after the quarterfinals."

Yukio stopped in his tracks. He'd seen Haizaki's sneer after the game, but he hadn't thought…

He hadn't thought.

"What happened?"

"Aomine punched his lights out, apparently."

Once, in kindergarten, Yukio had been watching a group of girls play around at the top of the tallest slide when two of them had stumbled and fallen, one on top of the other's leg. He still remembered the sound of the bones snapping.

Would a punch to the face make that same sound, if it was dealt hard enough?

"There's probably nothing to do about it," Hyuuga continued. "Kuroko is convinced it calmed him right down. But, well. Some asshole deliberately injured your player. I thought you'd want to hear about the follow-up."

There was something hard in his voice that made the information cross from gossip into something much sharper, that made Yukio remembered Seirin's qualification game for the Winter Cup.

"Yeah," he said, keeping his face devoid of expression. "Of course, that was unsporstmanlike of Aomine."

The door to the waiting room caught his attention when it opened from the inside, but it was the woman who came out, closely followed by a man in a suit and his left arm in a sling.

"Right, yeah," Hyuuga said with all the emotion of a wooden board. "Absolutely. It's unconscionable. He should not have done that under any circumstances."

"Exactly," Yukio replied in kind. He looked up at the stars, and allowed himself a tight, nasty smile. "But thanks for the heads up."

"Don't mention it," Hyuuga said, and "good luck tomorrow."

Yukio had delivered his first speech on the futility of relying on luck, even in words or thoughts, on the eve of his eighth birthday. His aunt had set the electric whisk on the counter and watched him intently as he talked. When he was done she'd turned back to her work, filling the silence with whirring.

Eventually she'd shut it off, pressed the button that unlocked the attachments, and sat down across from Yukio. _You're right to think that it's no good to count on luck_ , she'd said, handing him a whisk covered in his favorite blue frosting. _But still, isn't it nice to know that someone out there hopes the world is on your side?_

He stretched his shoulders. "You, too," he said, and found himself meaning it. "We'll be watching."

Yukio hung up first, watched the _Call ended_ display fade back into a large digital clock.

Twenty minutes.


End file.
